The Wrath and the Dawn (The Wrath and the Dawn, #1) in READALONGS WITH APRIL

Jan 01, 2016 Dil Ramadhani rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: on-shelf, heart

I want moooooore!

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Jul 09, 2015 Aleshia rated it liked it

Shelves: romance, library

I liked this book because it was interesting to me, but at the same time it was stupid. Shahrzad volunteers to marry a King who takes a new bride every day only to kill her by the coming dawn. She does this to extract revenge on the King for killing her best friend, Shiva, who obviously was a previous wife of this King. Now as you can see I shelved this book as a romance, so naturally Shahrzad falls in love with the King (and the King her). Fine. I can go along with this, but there has to be goo I liked this book because it was interesting to me, but at the same time it was stupid. Shahrzad volunteers to marry a King who takes a new bride every day only to kill her by the coming dawn. She does this to extract revenge on the King for killing her best friend, Shiva, who obviously was a previous wife of this King. Now as you can see I shelved this book as a romance, so naturally Shahrzad falls in love with the King (and the King her). Fine. I can go along with this, but there has to be good reason for such things.

There isn't.

Instead there is just this force of attraction that the King has to Shahrzad and she in turn starts to fall for him. But I don't think the King does anything to win over Shahrzad's heart. At least not so quickly. To top it off there is a love triangle where Shahrzad's childhood sweetheart, Tariq, finds out about her volunteering and he rides off into the sunset to go save her from the murderous King (No, not quite a sunset, but pretty darn close). The love triangle is pretty pointless because it is very obvious who is going to win, especially by the end of the book, but given the ending I am sure the 2nd book (Yes, there this is a series) will focus more on the other end of the triangle (that won't actually win anyway, so who cares).

A lot of my criticism comes from my own views on love. I think there is both a practical side and a passionate side to loving someone. It is not practical to marry someone who has murders women, especially when one of the victims is a best friend or someone else close. Shahrzad seems to forget about this. Also, Shahrzad is supposed to be this cunning, silver-tongued woman. Yes, the silver-tongue comes through, but she doesn't go in with an immediate plan on how to murder the King, and because of this hesitation she ends up falling for him, completely forgetting about her friend and the revenge she wanted, as well as her childhood sweetheart. How can you just suddenly throw all that to the side? You should've killed the King by the first night and then got the heck out of there. I just didn't understand all the hesitation when Shahrzad is a quick-witted person who gets what she wants.

I'm still going with 3 stars of "liked it" because I was still intrigued by the story. I wanted to know why the women were being murdered (which I think resolves as being really, really, really unoriginal, but whatever). I also wanted to learn more about the King overall, since the story doesn't have much of his point of view (POV changes between a couple characters, but is mostly Shahrzad) and why he lets Shahrzad live the first night. The writing is also nice, but I thought it was really wordy at times. Mrs. Ahdieh really likes to describe the surroundings. I also plan on continuing the next when it comes out. I may have to get to reading A Thousand and One Nights though, since that doesn't involve a pointless love triangle. ...more

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Oct 30, 2015 J rated it it was amazing

Shelves: mg-ya-favorites, favorites, diverse-books, ya-fantasy, ya-mg-diverse, fall-in-love-with-the-enemy, epic-books

First of all, I really enjoyed reading this book. I would recommend it for sure.
Whenever there is a book that has the "falling in love with the enemy" premise, I know that all is not as it seems. So, that was never the point of this book for me. I knew there would be reveals and twists and character development. The thing that was important to me was Shazi and how she reacted to it all. And I thought that she was a character I could usually root for. Even in the moments where she misunderstood ...more

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Jun 24, 2015 Stefani rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: ebooks

I think this is the first retelling I've ever read. I've read bits of 1001 Nights so I was familiar with the story. I wanted to see the twist.

I am definitely not a fan but I'm intrigued by Khalid and I wanna see where the story goes so I'll probably read the next book. We'll see.

ps. lots of people said there were words they didnt know and were thankful for the glossary. I had no such problem. I don't know why or how but I knew them :) ...more

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